Troy, Michigan

If to imagine the city is to imagine the human psyche, as it is in Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities, then Wendy S. Walters's TROY, MICHIGAN approximates a psyche flattened by middle class desires, racist anxieties, and inexplicably terrifying violence. Walters's quiet, haunting utterances are beautifully precise mappings of the measure of a city's weight and thereby its dark (or darkened) soul.